Dance music at Glastonbury Festival

Trigger warning if dance music at Glastonbury isn’t your thing

Glastonbury Festival is the world’s greatest music festival, but you already knew that. In fact it’s the worlds best “rock and pop” festival, and dance music festival combined.

Despite going to hundreds of gigs, and thousands of club nights over the years, I’d not been to Glastonbury until 2014. I’ve been lucky, I’ve not missed one since. There’s no real explanation for this late start, I went to Reading in 1991, but Glastonbury just seemed a long way away, a big effort and life got in the way. But I’m now planning to never miss another one until I hang up my raving boots. If you are there this year and see a fella in a limited edition DJWORX t-shirt, come and say hello.

Over the Glastonbury years I’ve seen some incredible sights – That naked hippy, a marriage proposal, a marriage break up and the mud of 2016. I’ve also seen some unbelievable DJ sets – Mark XTC, Chloe Robinson and EZ all immediately spring to mind.

Owning DJWORX, my tastes are definitely dance music aligned. Sure there’s space for early 90s indie bands like PWEI, Neds and Flowered Up in my Spotify (Note – I don’t use Spotify) but fundamentally it’s repetitive beats all the way (Never grow up).

Which leads us to the trigger warning – I’ve actually gone out of my way to avoid music I don’t care for at Glastonbury. And people seem annoyed by this. Especially if they didn’t actually go themselves. “What do you mean you didn’t watch Adele and went to watch Carl Cox at the Glade instead?”

So I thought it would be fun to look back at all of the “classic” headliners I’ve missed over the years while tracking down that elusive 90s hardcore set in the depths of the SE Corner. And the results are going to annoy many BBC coverage Glastonbury watchers. “What a waste of a ticket, Elton John is a national institution etc”

Underlined are the headliners I have seen at least some of: 

• 2014 – Arcade Fire, Metallica, Kasabian – (Metallica was accidental, but the last 20 minutes of their set that I saw was ferocious)
• Other Stage – Skrillex, Jake Bug, Massive attack
• 2015 – Florence and the Machine, Kanye West, The Who – (Who better? A lot of people)
• Other – Rudimental, Dedmaus, Chemical Brothers
• 2016 – Muse, Adele, Coldplay
• Other – Disclosure,  New Order, LCD Soundsystem
• 2017 – Radiohead, Foo Fighters, Ed Sheeran
• Other – Major Lazer, Alt-J, BBK
• 2019 – Stormzy, The Killers, The Cure
• Other – Tame Impala, Chemical Brothers, Christine and the Queens
• 2020 – Cancelled
• 2021 – Cancelled
• 2022 – Billie Eilish, Paul McCartney, Kendrick Lamar – (Kurupt FM > McCartney)
• Other – Foals, Megan thee Stallion, Pet Shop Boys (PSB – Brilliant, despite catching Covid during their set)
• 2023 – Arctic Monkeys, Guns N’ Roses, Elton John – (GNR – 15 minutes was enough)
• Other – Wizkid, Lana del Ray, Queens of the Stone Age 
• 2024 – Dua Lipa, SZA and Coldplay
• Other – Idles, Disclosure, The National
• 2025 – The 1975,  Neil Young, Olivia Rodrigo
• Other – Loyle Career, Charlie XCX, The Prodigy – (At time of writing 2025 hasn’t yet happened, and although the Prodigy should have been Friday or Saturday, this will be a “moment”, espeically if they play Wind It Up)